Things could be a lot worse...

I've been feeling more awake and more compos mentis today.  And it's a good thing, because I just had a 'phone call from my elder brother, who is feeling completely dazed and discombobulated after falling on a wet floor at the sports centre, on the way out of a badminton match, and breaking his left wrist.

Big Bro has been pretty healthy and very active all his life (not like me, then!).  He's only been an in-patient in hospital once, and that was just for day surgery.  He's never had a plaster cast before.  He sounds distinctly as if he's still in shock.

I've been where he is now, and anything I can do to help him, I will.  But he has to do most of it by himself.  Family and friends can be a big help, but no-one can take away the pain, or give you back the endless nights of poor (or no) sleep.  Poor bloke; and because he's several hundred miles away I can't just drop everything and go straight round after work tonight, because I wouldn't be able to get back the same evening, and I have to be at work again tomorrow. 

It certainly reminded me of how much worse life can be than just taking a week to get over an anaesthetic, though.  Poor old Steve, he doesn't deserve this.

A year ago today...

A year ago today, at about this time, I had just got home from the A&E department with a broken wrist. I had been x-rayed, examined, and strapped up in a Fortuna splint, and I had an appointment at the Fracture Clinic for the next morning. I trailed in, somehow got out of my coat, and then struggled round the kitchen, making myself a cup of tea and some toast, I rang my boss, then my mother, and then I sat down and felt sorry for myself.

It’s amazing, looking back on the last twelve months, to think I have accomplished anything at all this year. There were times when I felt I would never get through the near-eight weeks I was in plaster. Then there were times, after the plaster came off, when I feared I’d never get the use of my hand back. There were times when I felt I’d never again have a scrap of spare energy. Any kind of shock or anything remotely out of the ordinary could reduce me to tears. I slept badly for months and toiled through life bribing myself onward with meals out, trips to the ballet, chocolate and alcohol.

I am very, very grateful that that time is over. I am very grateful to the NHS for all the treatment and support, and to everyone who bore with me while I was so slow, so clumsy and so tired all the time. I’m very grateful too for having had the grit to stick at my exercises. I didn’t feel very gritty, but something reminded me, each time I wanted to fold up and cry, that there really was no other option. I’m grateful to the still small voice within, that shouted at me and kept me going.

And, above all, I am very grateful that nothing worse has happened to me. When I think of some of the horrors that people bear, the illnesses and accidents, the devastating effects of natural disasters and wars... my blood runs cold at the thought. A simple broken wrist gave me such a bitter endurance test, even here in a wealthy, civilised country like this. My prayers and thoughts go to everyone who is struggling with circumstances far worse than mine were; may their gods be with them, may their life not fail them.

I’d had all sorts of plans for what I meant to do in 2010; and despite the first six months of the year having been almost entirely focussed on getting back the use of my right hand and arm, I have still made some progress on them. Given the circumstances, this pleases me inordinately.

In particular, I’ve finally started on trying to get an agent for my writing. Agent No 1 turned “GY” down; the first three chapters are now with Agent No 2. If she also says no too, then I move on to Agent No 3, and so on down the list. It may take some time to get anywhere - I may never get anywhere at all - but I have overcome that huge, smothering fear about showing my work, and that means a good deal to me.

I’ve also begun on my “Working through the back burner items” project, and it’s proving really worthwhile. I’m trying to draft a synopsis and make a few notes about where an idea came from and what I see as the theme of a story, and the results are fascinating. Doing this really clarifies how ready (or not) a story is. It brings all the glitches and weaknesses to the fore, but it also fires up my creativity, thinking of the things I want to do.

Another odd discovery I’m making as a result of this exercise is the quantity of common threads between the stories. Some of these were expected – for example, I am a whole-hearted romantic, and I love Science Fiction and the fantastic, and it shows. But so far, if I had to pick an overarching theme of the stories I want to tell, it would have to be “redemption”, and I would not have anticipated that.

The “back burner” project also gives me something relatively simple to do of an evening, if I’m tired and feeling uncreative. Each synopsis is done-with in a few pages at most; I don’t need to follow through with the details, just explain the basics. It doesn’t stretch me, but at the end of each one I do I still feel I’ve achieved something.

Rain to come?

My wrist is aching - it has been all morning. I hope it isn't going to rain - I've left a line of washing out, on the say-so of the BBC that today would be sunny!

Come to think of it, I hope I'm not going to have a weather-monitor wrist. I don't want to ache in damp weather - that could make the British winter a pretty uncomfortable time.

Kew Green is full of schoolboys playing cricket - slightly chaotic catching practice at the moment. Gentle Lammas-tide weather so far; cloudy sky, fluffy green trees, and the Green itself burnt to dusty brown by the summer heat and drought. Into August already; my goodness, the year is whizzing by...

Accidentally and most definitely not on purpose

I'm not feeling at my best today; I'm stiff all over and my left leg hurts. Last night on my way home from work I had my first ever fall from my bike.

It was a completely unforeseeable accident, and frankly a bloody silly one, too. I was just coming to the point where the cycle track over Kew Bridge debouches into the road – I was slogging up the sloping approach, being boxed in by another cyclist who had begun to overtake me and then slowed down because he too was on a stiff slope; he was intent on turning right, I wanted to go left onto the bridge, but because of his position I was trying to keep tabs on where he was and not looking left as I should have done. As I came up towards the junction with the cycle path I looked left for the first time – and found another bike bearing down on me, coming off the slope of the bridge very fast, ridden by a huge bloke in black biker leathers covered with Harley Davison logos (god knows what he was doing on a pedal bike). He was heading not for the ramp off the cycle track but straight for the full-height kerb, and so directly at me. He was wearing dark glasses and had a pair of headphones on (I could see the wires), and he was not only not braking, but actively peddling, presumably to increase speed, despite coming down a steep slope towards a junction. He showed no sign of having seen me, and I panicked.

It was my own fault for not having looked before; but to be honest even if I had noticed the guy earlier, I would have assumed that he’d be braking sensibly on his descent and we’d be able to pass one another safely on the ramp. As it was, he was hurtling straight at me like an express train and I had no choice but to get right out of his way.

I wasn’t sure there was enough room to move forward without risking him smashing into my rear wheel, so I braked hard, dropped my feet to the ground, and managed to push myself backwards instead. But I lost my balance. I toppled with an undignified yell into the gutter, with my bike crashing on top of me. The big fella went straight past, completely oblivious, missing me by inches; he flew off the kerb showily and whizzed away in the direction of Richmond. I couldn’t help noticing, as I pushed myself upright and peered after him dazedly, that he was now cycling on the pavement.

I’m honestly not sure he ever noticed me. Maybe if you’re normally on a motorbike you get used to looking out for different things. But I wouldn’t have expected a proper biker to cycle on the pavement like a wuss. I mean, I don’t cycle on the pavement, and I’m a total wuss.

Anyway, I hauled myself to my feet, checked the Old Lady over for damage (not so much as a flake of paint) and then checked myself – torn trousers (damn; they were quite new and a nice colour), bruises and gravel burn. Gingerly rolling up the torn trouser leg revealed more bruises and a skinned knee worthy of an eight year old.

So I did as one is always advised to as an eight year old; I got straight back on my bike and started peddling again. But I’m afraid that when I got in I opened the bottle of Laphroaig I keep in the bottom of the wardrobe, and poured myself a stiff drink, before settling down to wash the gravel burn and the skinned kneecap, slap TCP on them, and coat most of my left leg in bruise ointment.

Poor little me, eh? But it could have been so much worse. Really, if I never take a more serious tumble than that, I shall count myself lucky. After all, I didn’t break anything!

It's over

I went to Charing Cross Hospital for Fracture clinic again this morning. I was all braced for another marathon of waiting (all my previous appointments have taken about three and a half hours). I had a novel, a notebook and pen, biscuits and a bottle of water. But I was in and out in less than an hour - and I have been discharged. I am, officially, no longer in need of any medical supervision for my wrist.

I'll have a piece of metal in my arm for the rest of my life, but it isn't hurting me, and it only sometimes triggers security scanning machines. But according to Mr Thomas, the consultant orthopaedic surgeon who saw me, I have made a very good recovery from a nasty little injury. "Well done," he said, and he actually beamed at me. I fear this means a lot of his patients do not make good recoveries. Maybe they don't drive themselves nuts with boredom doing the exercises...

I walked out of there with a huge grin on my face; I was smiling so wide that about seven people smiled back at me between the hospital and Hammersmith Broadway (note to self; do this more often - it would appear it's a really simple way to spread a little happiness!).

I'm at about 85% normal mobility now, and Mr Thomas, going by the low-tech measuring system called "squeeze my finger, please", thinks I'm at about 90% of normal strength.

Hurrah! The endless exercises, the physiotherapy sessions and Wrist Boot Camp and all the pain and worry (& grumbling) have paid off!

Thank you to all my friends and neighbours, and everyone out there, for all your support while I moaned and groaned my way through this long uphill slog of recovery!

Have a good weekend.

A quiet night in...

…that’s what I need.

I have been going out a lot; not on the tiles (no such luck, though admittedly I wouldn’t have had the energy to make whoopee until quite recently) but to concerts and the theatre. Back in December, I looked at my plaster arm and thought “I’m going to need some enjoyable things to look forward to, or I’ll end up moping at home feeling sorry for myself, and drinking too much Laphroig”. Since spending every weekend in the southern hemisphere was out of the question, I compromised on upping my usual quota of theatre tickets, so that I would have a couple of evenings out each week.

And it’s been great – and next month should be great, too, bringing four ballet performances, three contemporary dance performances, one Indian dance performance, three orchestral concerts, three concerts of Sacred Music thru’ the Ages by The Sixteen, Monteverdi's "Vespers of 1610", two “Insight”-type events and a World Music group called Salsa Celtica. No opera, no straight theatre and no cinema (yet). March has had a similar mixture of events and activities, and most of them have been highly rewarding evenings out. But I am getting a bit tired!

Tonight I have a night off. I’ll make a risotto, pack my bag for my weekend away (only going down to Mum’s – nothing exotic) and then I may do some writing on the Work In Progress; or I may just sit on my butt and watch a dvd, and sip a drop of that whisky…

On Tuesday night I was back at Covent Garden for the latest Royal Ballet triple bill. Several of my favourite dancers were appearing – Yuhui Choe, Leanne Benjamin, Sarah Lamb, a good splash of top quality Acosta, and the two company ginger toms, Mssrs Watson and McRae, to complete the mixture. Not forgetting Marianela Nuñez being hauntingly graceful and serene in “Concerto” – though unfortunately partnered by Rupert Pennefather, who I’m afraid I find a singularly unexciting dancer, Bright Young Hope though he be (this may be partly because he looks alarmingly like Baby Bro, which I find oddly disturbing).

“Concerto” was great, and the music (Shostakovitch Piano Concerto 2) was gorgeously played. “The Judas Tree” was powerful and grim, as I’d been warned, and full of huge show-off jumps that just shout “made during the golden era of Mukhamedov”. “Elite Syncopations” was light and sweet and sparkling, but my enjoyment of it was marred somewhat by the chap three seats along from me who kept guffawing loudly. It’s a funny ballet, but soft chuckle funny, not “Ho, ho, ho!" funny. Maybe he really needed the light relief, after the violence of “Judas Tree”.

I also saw Stephen Hough and Rupert Christiansen in the audience (not together, I hasten to add!) and another of my favourite dancers on the Tube on my (& presumably also his) way home.

I was buoyed-up after that, ready for a good day yesterday; but my final one-to-one physiotherapy session has set me back with a bump. From next week I’ll be in “Wrist Group” which sounds a bit like boot camp for broken wrists. I’ve made relatively little progress – indeed, my ulnar deviation was actually worse than a fortnight ago. And I found out something I’d never previously known; the NHS, strapped for resources as they are, are not committed to getting me back my former degree of mobility. They just have to get me to the level of competence that is considered clinically adequate. And this clinically acceptable level is a bit less than 2/3 of my former flexibility. Help!!

If I’d been told that at the start, I would have started looking for a private physio on the spot. Two thirds of my previous capability is not enough, for the god’s sakes! I can’t live the rest of my life with this bl**dy rusted hinge creaking about on the end of my arm. I draw – I write – I cycle – I dance – I undo lids that other people can’t shift – I make my own bread - I WANT MY EFFING HAND BACK, AND I WANT IT BACK AS WAS!

Spring cheer and wintry bleakness

I went for a walk in the gardens in my lunch break. It was warm enough that I was okay with only a sweater, no coat. Spring bulbs are coming out everywhere and birds are singing, and the air smelled of wintersweet and viburnum blossom, and of pine trees in the sun. Heaven is coming; it’s spring. This has felt like a long winter, what with the successive snowfalls, the colder than average temperatures, and my bl**dy broken wrist. To see the wheel of the year turning is such bliss at these times. It spurs me on to keep working at my physio exercises as the gardening season approaches again.

Last night I had the first dose in a short course of Janacek shots; “Katya Kabanova” at the ENO. Wintry despair to contrast with my own spring cheer. Gorblimey it’s bleak stuff, guvnor.

It’s a bleak story, of toxically unhappy families, adultery, betrayed passion and suicide, and it's a bleak production, of barren open spaces and crowding, bare walls; a solitary lamp-post, a room full of angular shadows, an icon of Christ that is swiftly turned to the wall...

Patricia Racette is Katya, who has married (god knows why) the spineless, mother-fixated, deeply knotted-up Tichon Kabanov, played by the ever-reliable John Graham-Hall, and is now tormented daily by his truly horrible mother (Susan Bickley having a whale of a time being a poisonous old toad). Katya is a good-hearted woman who wants to be a good wife; she is deeply religious, with a mystical sense of connection with God, but she is also passionately emotional and longs for a freedom of experience her small-town life can never give her. Unable to escape her mother-in-law’s endless demands, she tries without success to get some demonstration of her husband’s love, or even some sort of reaction from him. When she meets neighbour Boris, Stuart Skelton’s six-foot hunk of red-haired Australian beefcake, well, what with his magnificent rich tenor and all, she is lost.

Listening to him, I don’t blame her. I don’t normally go for the beefy type, but Mr Skelton could rock my boat any day. What a voice! And he can act (and he’s ginger!). This is the third time I’ve seen him in action; roll on the fourth – it can’t come soon enough. Stuart Skelton is the heroic tenor for me.

There are a secondary pair of lovers in the story, as well; Tichon’s adopted sister Varvara is in love with the amiable local schoolmaster Kudriash; rather like Anne and Simon to Katya and Boris’s Gabriel and Rose, they are saner and more balanced, in both their love affair and their general way of dealing with life. Shortly before the final scene they decide to run away to make a new life together in Moscow. Their directness and good humour in the face of the situation is a touching contrast to the superficially more romantic but utterly self-defeating passion of Katya and Boris. In their music, simple folk-dance melodies and ballad-like lyrics express their healthily cheerful attitude to love. Boris and Katya, however, have fabulous music of great dramatic outbursts, lyrical and wildly emotional, full of wonderful characteristic Janacek sounds I haven’t the technical vocabulary to describe. It tells you everything you need to know about the uncontrollable intensity of their feelings, and the thoughtless passion with which they rush into their affair.

Of course, their love is poignantly brief, doomed from the start. Boris turns out to be a man of straw; Katya loses her marbles, confesses all, loses some more of her marbles, meets Boris one last time and then, flattened by his farewell, drowns herself. So it’s hardly laughs all evening by the Volga; but well-done, as last night’s performance was, it makes for a very powerful, deeply upsetting evening.

On Monday, I’m off for my Janacek booster shot; “The Cunning Little Vixen”. Again, bliss; and it will give an antidote to yesterday’s tormented gloom. It’s as full of green growing life and natural cycles as “Katya Kabanova” is of fractured hearts, denatured relationships, and death.

And so the wheel turns, and the way of things goes as it wills; and we go on.

Random scatterings...

There was another bit of blue sky this morning, but it went away again.

The red and yellow apple was rather cotton-woolly when I ate it. It's okay, though, because The Rox only got it from a basket of free apples left in the staff kitchen, so someone else is responsible for buying mushy apples, not Her Roxiness.

I simply have to pass this on as despite the strong language it is so funny and so true, even for those who are not professional/succesful/published writers. Once it is known that you write, people say "Will you read my writing and tell me what you think of it? I really, really want an honest critique" - and then they hit the roof, or cry themselves to a saturated solution, when you do give them an honest critique. So you try giving a dishonest, fuzzy one (and know you have cheated, on many levels, just to avoid hassle) or you start saying "I never read other tyro writers' stuff" and sounding horrendously smug instead. Thanks to Hellie in Cape Town for putting me on to that link.

Thomson Holidays are still prejudiced against solo travellers. Their website now announces there are no seats left on the plane if you try to book as a single; then if you try to book for two people, suddenly the plane has plenty of room. They are stupid for turning away custom. And I am equally stupid for hoping they'll change their ways.

Watched half of "Contact" last night; saving the rest for Friday as I'm out tonight. What an interesting film; it explores the tension between scientific detachment and spirituality with sympathy for both sides. It's intelligent and exciting in equal measure, has lovely special effects (and shots of the real - and spectacular - Very Large Array in New Mexico), lovely Jodie Foster, lovely William Fichtner (sadly only in a small part) and Matthew McConaughey proving he can underact if he wants to... Science Fiction is a great genre when it is this well used.

I can now lift a small tray with two coffee cups on it - cups actually containing coffee, that is. I have been given a piece of pink Squeezy Therapeutic Exercise Sponge by the physiotherapist at Charing Cross Hospital. By the middle of the month I may graduate onto Squeezy Therapeutic Putty - or even Squeezy Balls... I soldier on with the two-minute-stretching exercises and the labourious lifting of half-kilo weights. I often ache by evening, but I won't give in.

There is a gorgeous white dog with a black patch on one side of his head, running about on Kew Green in the misty grey light.

Someone I was at grammar school with has written to me out of the blue. Hello, Carol!

Life is weird. Wouldn't change it for anything else, though. And even with this dull sky and chilly wind, and all the seagulls inland (scattering before the excited arrival of that eager little dog), it is still, slowly, edging towards spring.

Of strange and happy things...

I'm sitting in the office and there's a wren singing in one of the trees outside, belting its tiny heart out like the hope of spring personified. Such a magnificent voice from so small a bird. Above him, over the richly textured grey sky, gulls float by, cruising on the mild, damp breeze. It has not rained once all day (so far), the temperature is well above freezing, and on Kew Green the muddy grass is starting to grow again...

Last night I was at "The Elixir of Love" at the ENO with my mother and my friend Alan. It's a lovely, happy production, full of neat details, very succesfully updated (ENO have a pretty good record on updating operas, going by those I've seen) and well sung. Sarah Tynan continues to be deliciously good, as she has been in everything I've seen her do; John Tessier was a sweetly-sung, credible Nemorino, and Andrew Shore was just marvellous. It was frivolous and touching and romantic, it had a happy ending, and it was just what I needed, after the angst and anguish of "Mayerling" a few days ago. Not that I didn't revel in the brilliance of "Mayerling"; but this was fun, and sometimes you need fun.

We were reminiscing during the interval about other things we've seen at the Coliseum; in Mum's and Alan's cases, going way back to pre-ENO days, in mine only to about 1976. My father took me and my future stepmother there to see English National Ballet in "Les Sylphides", "Graduation Ball" and "Le Tricorne". It was my first ever live ballet and I was so excited I felt ill for most of the day; I said nothing, for fear I'd be forbidden to go and sent to bed instead. We had Dress Circle tickets (gods know what it had cost him) and I can remember exactly what we all wore: Dad in his "orchestra suit"; Jane in a blue and white dress with a low neckline, and a white shawl with a silver lamé fringe; me in my best dark pink blouse and the long skirt patterned with elephants which Aunt O had made me for my birthday. Oh-my-god that's a long time ago! Oh, strange and happy memory. It was an enormous thrill; beautiful ballerinas in floaty dresses, and wonderful music, and colourful sets... everything an excited little girl's first trip to the ballet ought to be.

After that we got onto joking about the names of the characters in "The Elixir of Love" - Dr Sweetbitter, Sergeant Goodheart, Little No-one... Belcore is usually played as a bit of a jerk, and was here, yet the name implies he should be seen as essentially decent. It's like the way that Shakespeare's characters' names often give one a clue as to who they are: in "Romeo and Juliet", for example - Benvolio literally means "I mean well", while Mercutio evokes Mercury and mercurial. And of course the Italian name Tebaldo, which is what the character Romeo kills is called in the original source, is more usually anglicised as Theobald. Theobald Capulet; he just doesn't sound very aggressive, does he? Theobald Capulet is fluffy and a bit wet; a drunk Sloane Ranger throwing up on the stairs. Whereas Tybalt Capulet sounds tough, snappy and short-tempered, from the moment you hear his name. Short vowels and sharp dentals versus long vowels and soft, labial consonants; it's all given away in the sound. Theobald is an Old English Sheepdog; Tybalt is a Jack Russell Terrier.

Hmm. Hard to imagine Thiago Soares or Gary Avis as a Jack Russell Terrier... Very tall Jack Russells.

After the opera, I walked back to the car park on the South bank with them and we sat in Alan's converted camper van chatting for a few minutes. Out of the blue my mother produced a small bundle of tissue paper and handed it to me, saying "I've been meaning to give you this, it's just a little present to say how much I admire how well you're coping with this broken wrist". It was a very light package of hastily-folded white tissue paper; I unwrapped the paper saying "Oh Mum, you shouldn't have - " - and my great-great-grandmother's Victorian rose gold five-bar gate bracelet slid into the lap of my skirt.

I daresay a Victorian bracelet doesn't amount to much in some families; not so in mine. This is one of my mother's few pieces of "good" jewellery. It is a simple thing, almost plain in appearance, but it is the plainness of something that does not need fancy decoration. It has graced the wrists of all those beautiful and indefatigable McLaughlin/La Faunte/Smith/Dent women whose pictures hang in Mum's hallway; and now it slipped over mine and lay there heavy and shining while I gasped my stunned thanks.

"You'd have it one day anyway," she said. "I wanted you to be able to enjoy it now."

I didn't know what to say. I still don't. I will cherish it as I cherish Mum herself, and all the heritage of my blood. I'm proud of my ancestry, of the mixture of places and cultures, of the history of brave decisions and strong determined people, of risk-takers, crossers of boundaries, holders-together of families... If only I had a daughter to pass the bracelet, and the bloodline, on to in my turn.

Strange and happy, indeed.

TGIFriday

No, not the steakhouse. Just the sentiment. Thank the gods, it's Friday.

This week has rushed by, which I ought to be concerned about. Isn't it horrible how time passes faster and faster as one gets older? Since it has been rather a rough week I'm relieved to reach Friday and see my two days of rest ahead. Although the weather forecast is for more bally snow tomorrow - rats!!

I had another physio session this morning and was commended on having made good progress with my flexibility exercises, but then told I had a good long haul still to go, and that after the first two weeks progress normally slows down a lot >loud and heartfelt sigh<. My wrist has ached for most of the rest of the day after being asked to do exercises with weights for the first time. Still, I've now got an extended exercise programme, and will push on with it. There isn't much else I can do, anyway. I want my hand back... please...

Tomorrow I have a concert at the Festival hall; Janacek and Suk, should be good. At the moment I'm thinking I'll go up into the West End a bit earlier and take a leaf out of Jana's book by having a sketching session in a café somewhere, with a light supper perhaps. She and her cohorts in California seem to do this regularly and I like the idea; and it does my aching and frustrated creativity good to get a little exercise. I know, because I managed to do a little bit of creative activity yesterday.

I was watching "The Culture Show" after an early supper. There was an item about the Royal Ballet and on impulse I picked up my sketchbook and tried a little drawing; to my immense pleasure I was able to produce a thumbnail sketch of Jonathan Watkins that actually looked like Jonathan Watkins! Yippee! So I did another, rather sketchier one (he moves a lot). Then I started one of Laura Morera, but the interview cut away from her before I could finish that, leaving her with no eyes (eeee, zombie ballerina ahoy). Finally I managed to grab a hasty back view of one of the dancers Watkins was rehearsing. After that the programme went to an interview with Anthony D'Offay, who is considerably less easy on the eye, but I drew him too, anyway.

The lines went where I wanted! The sketches of people looked like people! Yes, yes, orgasmic yes - I will be able to draw again!

It gave me such a buzz that I followed on by typing another page or so of the Work In Progress. So it was a good evening, and it has inspired me to try some more this weekend. Wish me luck; and have a peaceful weekend yourselves, out there...

A revelation and a mystery

It's so cold and wet, and my right wrist aches and creaks and my left thumb twinges at odd moments, and yesterday evening thanks to all this I lost my grip on all my resolve and slid into feeling thoroughly blue. Coming equal first with Emmanuel College Cambridge in University Challenge couldn't assuage my mood. Even a piece of apple pie with clotted cream didn't help. So I took refuge in the world of romantic love; or rather, in the bittersweet, romantic-yet-anti-romantic version that you find in the films of Powell and Pressburger. Those magic words on the screen in the opening titles - "A production of The Archers - Written, produced and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger", with the arrows thumping into the target behind, are an instant guarantee of quality...

I once wrote an essay on the Archers films for college - rather to the surprise of my tutor, who didn't think Michael Powell had made anything worth considering apart from "Peeping Tom", and so hadn't seen any of his other films (and this was a professional lecturer in film studies - shame on her!). I was able to burble about them to my heart's content with impunity, since she couldn't criticise my work without first working her way through more films than she had time for. I probably displayed the depths of my nerdiness to great advantage, but I was happy.

Last night I put on my dvd of "I know where I'm going!", which is one of the most wholeheartedly romantic of the Archers films. Tonight I'll probably follow it up with "The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp". Movie heaven; my perfect cinema date would be these two films, in a double bill at the Riverside Studios with a good meal first and a glass of shiraz in the interval.

"I know where I'm going!" is a love story, filmed in 1944 and released in 1945. Joan Webster, a confident and self-possessed young woman (played by Wendy Hiller) has by the age of 25 convinced herself that the way to happiness is to marry a wealthy man who she does not love and enjoy all the good things his money can buy her. On her way to the planned wedding in the Hebrides, however, the great British climate intervenes, stranding her on Mull for a week. Under the influence of a mystically beautiful landscape and of the friendly local people, and especially of Roger Livesey as the handsome but impoverished local laird, she is forced to face the folly of her dreams. As the film ends she decides to give up her planned marriage and acknowledges her feelings for Livesey. Returning up the hill from the little port accompanied by three pipers she joins him in the ruins of Moy Castle - and I have a lump in my throat the size of a tennis ball.

Summed up like that, it sounds like the worst, most formulaic Hollywood sludge, yet it couldn't be more different. It is subtle, ironic and delicate, treating its gold-digging heroine with sympathy even while pulling holes in her values, and allowing her to retain her astringent determination to the end. Her relationship with Livesey's warm, sardonic, honest hero is human and credible. I want to cheer when they get together.

Visually the film is absolutely sumptuous, creating more richness with black and white than many a colour movie achieves, and offering a succession of haunting images. The first entry of Pamela Brown's character Catriona, whistling on a hillside in the thick fog, surrounded by wolfhounds; the shots of the local girl Bridie waiting on the quayside, afraid her sweetheart has been drowned trying to earn the money to be able to marry her, her tension and grief conveyed through her stillness; countless outdoor shots of the local scenery; perhaps above all the wonderful sequence of the ceilidh at Ardnacroish, where the locals dance and sing puirt á beul and the lovers watch first the dancing and then one another (Powell having a lovely time here mucking about with all those po-faced theories about "the fetishistic Gaze"); over and over one is jolted by simple yet stunning imagery that tells much through little and draws you imperceptibly into the film's quiet magic.

Trying a while back to write a query letter for "Gabriel Yeats" I found myself thinking it would appeal to fans of Powell and Pressburger; watching this film last night I found myself thinking how accurate a description that was. It's almost as if I had been trying, unconsciously, to script my own Archers' movie. It's rather embarrassing to realise how much "Gabriel Yeats" pulls together themes and motifs from all my favourites.

One other thing I had never realised until last night was how much my protagonist owes to that wonderful actor Roger Livesey, who appears in this and two other great P&P films. I'd never seen it until now, but just as "Gabriel Yeats" is a fantasy Powell and Pressburger film, so Simon Cenarth is a dream Roger Livesey rôle. It's a revelation to me. How oddly the mind works; I've been looking for "the right face" for Simon for years, when all the time he had been right in front of me in three of my favourite films. If that hyperlink has come through okay, by the way, it's a still from "Colonel Blimp"; the beginning of the duelling scene.

There's a long-standing family mystery about Roger Livesey; according to the story, his family and my father's are connected. But no-one now can fill me in on the truth of it; my father couldn't remember the background when I asked him shortly before he died, and went off onto a tangent about the school his stepfather ran; my mother only knows the gist of the family story and none of the facts; the grandparental generation, who would have known the truth, are all dead now.

There is one piece of evidence, if one can call it that. When my parents married in 1962 they were given, by someone (no idea who) in my father's extensive family, a wedding present of a piece of glazed stoneware made by a potter called Evelyn Livesey. My mother still has the piece of pottery - it's gorgeous, a large dish shaped like a flattened cylinder seal, decorated with incised patterns and abstract shapes in a rich greenish glaze. It always serves as the main fruit platter on the Christmas dinner table, and I have adored it since I was a kid. My mother was told at the time that that Evelyn Livesey was a relative of Roger Livesey's and that the Livesey family were connected to my father's family, and I have always cherished this tentative connection, though I do wonder if it is not in fact a case of Chinese whispers. I've tried looking up the name "Evelyn Livesey" online but have got nowhere. I'd love to find out the truth about this someday.

Determined to be buoyant

You will gather, I'm trying resolutely to be cheerful and to look for things to laugh about. It's meant to keep me from fretting, since I have reason to fret just at the moment.

Yesterday afternoon, coming home from Morrisons in Acton (yes, apart from The Geek's birthday bash it was that exciting a weekend), I dumped my bag of shopping in the rack near the driver and was making my way down the bus to find a seat, using the overhead straps for balance. The bus jolted; I lurched and wrenched on the strap, and a sharp pain stabbed through the Mount of Venus on my left hand. The good hand. Or perhaps I should say the "good" hand, since it now isn't very good at all; it hurts like heck and I can't move my thumb properly any more. So I now have two damaged hands and am feeling pretty frustrated and frankly a bit scared.

What happens if whatever it is I've pulled in my left hand gets worse? Because my right hand, twitching about on the end of the rigid rusted-shut hinge that is my right wrist, ain't much use at present.

Managed to sublimate these self-absorbed worries for a while last night by watching "La Belle et la Bête" and marvelling again at what an extraordinary piece of film-making this is. How much Cocteau achieves with such slight means! How weird and wonderful the psychology of the story is, and how rich the black-and-white photography looks! And how marvellously sexy and scary and moving The Beast is. By gum, Jean Marais had presence, even under that make-up job. Perhaps I should say, especially under that make-up job...

Emotional barometer going down again

Feeling rather low after a physiotherapy session this morning which was a mixture of encouraging and deeply dispiriting. There are not going to be any quick fixes with this wrist of mine.

Some aspects of the session were encouraging. My flexion is "pretty good considering" and my finger strength is "excellent". My pronation and supination - the pivoting-from-below-the-elbow movements - are much as expected. But my extension - the bending-back movement - is non-existent and my radial deviation is poor, and both of these may be affected by the position of the plate in my arm. I have a list of exercises as long as my arm, and two different types of massage; all of these have to be done several times a day. No starting on strength exercises until I have more flexibility, since strength exercises will not lengthen the muscles but if anything shorten them; I need to lengthen them back to a good normal standard before i do anything else. I've also been given a night-splint to wear; rather like a brace for one's teeth, only to stretch the tendons instead of straightening the gob.

I came out feeling tired and shaky and rather dismal, got as far as the tube station saying "Pull yourself together, woman" to myself, and then gave up, and limped into Starbucks for a large coffee and an apple doughnut. It's no good; when you feel weepy and wimpy sometimes you just have to accept it. I dropped my teaspoon in the café and nearly cried at that; so clearly I am hardly emotionally robust at present and I'd do best to be honest with myself about it.

Last night's Philharmonia concert was exhilerating; George Benjamin's "Dance Figures", which I didn't know and liked enormously; a dazzlingly icy and bravura Stravinsky concerto from Viktoria Mullova (in a very strange nightdress-like frock worn over black cigarette pants - not sure this was a good look, though it did leave her arms free), and the Bartók "Concerto for Orchestra", which I adore and was duely blown away by once again. The brass practically lifted me out of my seat. The first time I heard this it was being played by the amateur orchestra my godfather Jim Clinch used to conduct - it's probably one of the most ambitious things they'd ever tackled - and at the end, in the split second before the applause started, Jimmy could be heard hissing "Well done!" as he laid down his baton. I think that was the concert when he lost a dress-shirt button ten minutes before the start and I got hoiked into the Green Room to sew him back together (I am one of those odd people who carry needle and thread, and sticking plaster, and a rubber band, and a pencil sharpener...). Sadly I don't think I'll ever get to rescue Maestro Salonen from a sartorial whoops, but one can't have everything in this life of ours.

I know the Benjamin piece was choreographed (by Anne Teresa de Keersmaeker, I think) on its première, but someone ought to play it to Wayne Macgregor anyway; I'm sure it's right up his street. For that matter, I don't think anyone's ever made a dance piece to the Bartók, either, and it practically cries out for movement.

I came home on a high, trying to write a poem about Bartók. Must remember that, when I feel low. There is so much beauty in the world, so much of excitement and passion. My little woes amount to less than a grain of sand in comparison.

Not-so-good day

I'm feeling rough.

I'm not sure why, but my wrist has swollen up badly and is very uncomfortable today. It aches all the time, and I am back on the paracetamol because life is too short to sit around in pain all the time. But it has really depressed me to be like this. I realise how "close to the edge" I am. I've used inverted commas there because I don't want to give the impression I may suddenly top myself or strip off and run screaming through the office; it isn't that bad an edge. It's the edge of tears and the edge of wanting to pull a sickie, that's all. But the thing is, I don't do those things, so I am up against my own standards, and that is a hard, flinty wall to be backed up against. I cry at the theatre, I cry at books, I cry at funerals; but I don't cry for self-pity. Self pity is for babies and the gutless, and tears are for those who like to play helpless because it makes life easier if someone else will deal with your problems for you. Pulling a sickie is for the lazy and the undisciplined. Good grief - where did I get my standards from? - Rooster Cockburn's School for Masochistic Machismo?

I am tired; just so tired.

Last night I tried to draw something; just a quick sketch of the man on the tele. Let's just say, the results were more tangled spaghetti than usual. This morning I wake to a painful, puffy hand that is even more immobile than before. I arrive at work to find the place reeks of carpet glue and the usual collection of weirdoes are writing and telephoning me, and I want to hide. I want to cry. I really do want to cry.

I want to be able to draw a line on the page that I shape, not my f***ing raspberry rippled hand; I want to be able to draw a line through the air with my fingertips, too; and to be able to open a screw top jar by myself. Oh gods, I want to weep; everything is still so difficult, and there is such a mountain ahead of me still to climb.

I will come through today, and the next day; I know this, rationally. I wish I had a little more strength to go and actually do it, though.

Plenty of people (Lance Armstrong, Amitabh Bhachchan, Alina Cojocaru, at least half the England cricket team, to name but a handful...) have come back from far worse injuries or health problems than this. I am being a total wimp. I am gutless and have no self-discipline. And I went to Rooster Cockburn's Masochism School. Please feel free to ignore me until I get my act together again.

Another little bit of progress...

I actually had enough energy yesterday evening to do some typing after work. I no longer have to type completely one-handed - I can now use the side of the middle finger on my right hand as well. This speeds things up considerably. There is a downside, unfortunately; I've got so used to typing with my left hand only that my bilateral thinking is a little askew, and I find some very odd spelling errors appearing as the two hands sometimes get out of synch with one another. Thus "cosnitsnet" for "consistent" and "etdnecyn" for "tendency".

I rather like "cosnitsnet", actually; wonder if I can find a use for that one? If it were "cosnitset" it might be something statistical...

Anyway, I turned on the old laptop, opened up one of the Works in Progress, and moved things on a little. I had been thinking about "Fortitude" and it had occured to me that one other character was as important as the three I had been forgrounding, and that he needed to be a pov character. But he was being sidelined - as things stood Iain Siward's lawyer got more "screen time" than him. So I have left Iain & co chugging through space and gone to see how James Fairlight is coping. And he is having a rough time; aliens who meddle with your brain (not from sadism but because they are trying to figure out how your species communicates when, bewilderingly, you appear not to be telepathic) are pretty hard to cope with. So it was an interesting evening's writing.

I make progress...

On Friday my cast came off!! Hurrah, free at last, free, free...

Actually, while I may be technically free, my right forearm is almost completely immobile, and my wrist is aching more than it has done in weeks. But the wretched, chafing, clunking, bally great cast is off. Gone. Kaput.

I have a Fortuna splint, but have been advised not to use it more than is absolutely essential. I'm practising gently pivoting my arm through the limited degrees of the circle that it will cover (about 55 degrees out of the usual 355 or so) and waggling it back and forth through the roughly 35 degrees (out of the normal 170-ish) that it will flex laterally. And still doing my tendon exercises. And hoping for the best.

At least I'm now allowed to lift small items. I can raise an apple to my mouth! - though once there, I have to move my mouth round the apple rather than turning the apple about in front of the mouth. Still, this is progress. But it is bizarre to reflect that the wrist is in normal circumstances one of the most flexible joints in the human body. It sticks out, this limb of mine, a frail flipper, swollen and nobbly, its scant remaining muscles floppy with weakness, its pallid skin dry and pimpled. Down the soft fleshy side runs a dramatic scar, pinkly puckered, rigid and tender. But free, free, free...

The best moment was when the consultant held out his pinkie finger to me, as one would to a baby, and said "Will you hold my finger, please?" I reached up and gave it a good squeeze, and he beamed; "Excellent grip, well done!" So the creepy-looking finger exercises have paid off. I'm not used to going around squeezing strange men's fingers...

Friday afternoon, when I got out of the hospital at last, I took a train down to my mum's in Kent, feeling rather shell-shocked, and spent most of the rest of the weekend sleeping on her sofa while the heavy white frost fell in the garden. Now I'm back at work, and back discovering what I can and can't do; all of which has subtley but definitely changed from when I had the cast. I am slower at getting dressed, for instance, but I can now walk briskly without jolting myself painfully. It will be a long time before I go dancing again, though. But by Thursday when I go to the Festival Hall to hear the Bartok "Concerto for Orchestra", I just might be able to applaud, at least softly, at least for a few seconds, in the normal way, instead of thrashing my left leg resoundingly. Which feels quite as weird (and painful), and looks just as kinky, as it sounds.

Plenty of great sportsmen have made full recoveries from worse injuries, as has Favourite Baritone, and as have innumerable dancers. Now I get to share what thay have been through.

And there are more snowdrops out at work. Progress all round; every day, and every experience, a new piece of the richness of life to savour.

And another thing...

It'll be nice to be able to do my bra up. Can't do a Strathspey till I can wear a bra; not with these boobs I can't.

Touch wood...

Oh dear – please excuse the jesting and very mild ribaldry. I am ever-so-slightly high with nervous tension; because, in theory (& touching wood repeatedly) my plaster cast is due to come off tomorrow.

Then the real work starts. Physiotherapy.

I’m really, really ready for this now. Just this last week or so, I have had virtually no pain in my wrist or arm. The aching and the cramp have both stopped (touches wood again!) and apart from the thumb I seem to have almost normal sensation and tendon flexing in all my digits. The thumb is still slightly numb and distinctly stiff, but it has stopped twitching spontaneously. I have done my finger exercises several thousand times (creeping out strangers on the Tube and in restaurants in the process) and am now very tentatively doing a little lifting of items heavier than a sheet of paper – a teaspoon, for instance, or a glove... Anything to strengthen this poor wee imprisoned wrist in advance of its liberation.

So I’ll be as primed for the un-plastered state as I can be. My fracture clinic appointment is at ten to ten and my occupational therapy appointment is at eleven. Yes, I am absolutely counting the hours. I have no idea what to expect, and I am both excited and scared. My wrist and hand are bound to be weak and comically stiff, and I may find they are almost totally useless.

I need a working right hand. I have learned to type, and to write, albeit slowly and eccentrically, with my left hand; but I cannot draw left-handed. Left-handed, I can do those art college drawing exercises designed to “free my mind” by producing images that are not so much zen spaghetti as Tourettes’ spaghetti. But I can’t draw anything left-handed that I can learn from or be excited or moved by; just uncoordinated scribble. I learned fifteen years ago that expressive scribble is a great tool. But it is just a tool, and not an end in itself.

And I want to get back to my Scottish Country Dancing club. I am missing the Strathspey something rotten.

More injury time

It’s not just me that has got bashed up. One of my colleagues appeared this week with a broken thumb – she can’t stand the Fortuna splint the hospital gave her, so is waving a magnificent hand with bruises the colour of boiled rhubarb around the office. Then another colleague came back from a dream holiday in Laos with her left arm in plaster after falling down a hillside & into a stream and fracturing her ulna.

And then I learn that one of my favourite dancers at the Royal Ballet (no, not that one! – lovely Slava Samodurov, a man who is able to look gracious and noble even in the worst of wigs) has apparently acquired a knee injury so bad that he is probably going to have to stop dancing. Bah! Poor bugger – he can’t be more than 35. It’s a hard career, and a horribly short one sometimes. At least the divine Miyako Yoshida, who I have been adoring from afar for years, has got to 44 before retiring. Gods, I’ll miss her. She has been an absolute delight in everything I’ve ever seen her do. Her Ondine was exquisite; unearthly and heart-breaking. I’m hoping (faint hope!) that I might be able to get a ticket for one of her UK farewell performances this April – funnily enough I’ve never seen her as Cinderella, which is the last role she’ll dance here. Crossed fingers - I might even treat myself to a slightly better seat than usual; if I can get one at all, that is. The Friends may have booked it out already.

I’ve never bothered to become a Friend of Covent Garden as one of the main perks, advance booking, is limited to two tickets per performance, and while for ballet I generally want just one, for myself, for opera I want three; one for me, one for mum and one for Alan. If I can’t get that, there’s no point in joining. The other big benefit (which I’d love!) is occasional access to rehearsals and the like – but this tends to be weekdays only and only during the day, so no use to a humble worker bee like me. Otherwise I'd be there, sketchbook in hand, every time...

Sorry about repeating that link, by the way – I just couldn’t resist the temptation. I do think that picture is hilarious. Whoever said sexy can’t be funny as well had never seen a ballet dancer dressed like that. Goddess knows what the photo session was like…

Here’s a much more respectable pic of Mr Avis in rehearsal recently. Now that looks like the bloke I found myself next to on the Tube station platform back in November. I think one of the reasons I feel simpatica towards him is because like me he has been lumbered by his genes with a face that looks deeply melancholy in repose. I wonder if women on market stalls ever say “Cheer up love, it might never happen!” to him when he’s trying to buy a kilo of apples? They do to me. As do bus drivers. And men in lorries… My late father used to say I had Roman gravitas, only undermined by my Eternal Student hair. Eternal Roman Student Gravitas; a bizarre yoking indeed. Oh well; I’m a Sagittarius, mutability is one of my official qualities.

Hmm… I just looked myself (well, Sagittarius) up; apparently “an air of the eternal student” is another of my official qualities. Okay, now that is bizarre.

Cultural snobbery versus cultural relativism

I was on the ‘phone yesterday evening and got my head bitten, a little. I had remarked on what I was doing when the ‘phone rang. It didn’t please the friend calling; she was a bit disgusted, in fact; apparently I was letting her down, or letting the side down, or letting my standards slip, or something.

I had got home and had a cup of tea, and folded (badly, and slowly, needless to say!) some washing. Then I had supper: reheated Waitrose vegetable frittata, garlic bread and cherry toms, followed by some yoghurt. And I settled down to enjoy my dvd of “An American in Paris” and a bag of lychees. The ‘phone went just as Gene Kelly and Leslie Caron were dancing to “Our Love is here to Stay” by the banks of the misty Seine. Grr. I remarked that I was busy, explained what with when I was asked; and then got told off, in a mild sort of way - for watching a “corny Hollywood musical” instead of something “worthwhile”.

Worthwhile!! I think light-hearted romantic exuberance is worthwhile, thanks very much! I think fun is worthwhile; and Gene Kelly’s dancing is certainly worthwhile.

But I’m afraid I wriggled out of arguing my point of view, using my arm as an excuse – “I broke my wrist, I’m entitled to watch what you consider to be slush” was the gist of it. I’m not proud of that. Because I should have stood up and blasted away.

I do not think of myself as a post-modernist; I do think there are greater and less great works of art and of culture. It isn't all one completely level field, a tin can of equal value to the "Virgin of the Rocks". But greatness isn't everything; I think almost all of it has its place in the world, goddammit. What Hollywood does well, it does supremely well. What Katherine Jenkins does well, she does supremely well. What Ursula Le Guin does well, she does supremely well. I watch Satyajit Ray and Kurosawa films, too; I listen to Jussi Bjorling singing Verdi and Favourite Baritone singing Schubert; I read George Elliott, I read A S Byatt. But I enjoy the other stuff too, and I cannot agree that it is rubbish. I will not be ashamed of liking “Firefly”. Don’t tell me that entertaining films, light music, and Science Fiction are no good because they are not “high art”. Don’t tell me that my enjoyment of “Strictly Come Dancing” means my appreciation of an evening at the Royal Ballet is tainted somehow. I appreciate them both, for their different qualities; one is great fun and often fascinating, the other is dazzling, moving and thrilling; each has its place and I have the right to love them both.

I’m not just talking about the fact I have personal tastes; I’m talking about everyone’s right to have personal tastes in the first place. The right to have them, and the right to express them in public without being sneered at. What gives some people the right to judge and condemn the cultural values of others? That is high art/currently fashionable/politically acceptable; and this is not… Says who? There is always someone holding themselves up as an arbiter of taste, belittling what doesn’t fit their criteria of class, worth, or acceptability, and they have no more authority to do so than I. I've grumbled about this before and I expect I'll grumble about it again. Down with cultural snobbery.